Pesky real life.

I am no longer going to apologise for my lack of blog posts, or my dearth of Tweets or my general lack of presence on the Interwebs. Life at The House of Purple Love has been beyond hectic these past four weeks. There have been kids to deal with ("NO Lima Bean, you may NOT drop out of school to become a barista. I was a Jewish Mother in a previous life and I didn't go through 58 DAYS of labour for you to pour coffee. You will go to Uni and become a barrister"). I have, however, acceeded to him getting dreads after school is finished.

The hardest thing to deal with over the past few weeks are the dogs, Stella Bella Bottom Smeller and Mrs Peaches.

SBBS has returned to her previous neurotic behaviour, of cowering whenever someone's voice is raised and gulping madly at her food and then muscling the smaller Mrs Peaches out of the way and gobbling down hers. And when you yell at her, she cowers, drops to the ground and wets herself.

Last week, I headed of for a girls weekend, leaving the pups and Mme Mouse home alone for 2 nights.

My fabulously gorgeous and relaxing weekend feeling lasted exactly 4 seconds after I walked through the door at THOPL, to find the pups had muscled their way into my bedroom, urinated all over my bed, shat in the washing pile, torn up their bedding and shat in the lounge room and the corridor....

So much for that loving holiday getaway feeling.

So blogging, and Interwebbing in general, has taken a back seat to life, neurotic dogs, brainiac sons wanting to make stupid life choices, the vagaries of SKYPE and remembering which night is rubbish night.

I am also getting better at cooking for one. Cous Cous has become my new best friend. Some chicken stock (or some Vegeta and water), some sliced chorizo, a handful of sundried tommies, a wodge of mozz or fetta and voila! super quick and easy dinner.

So I put out a call on Twitter the other week, for a Middle Eastern recipe for chicken and cous cous. And the divine Zoe, from Progressive Dinner Party, came to the... err... party with a recipe that she assured me, I would fall in love with. She was right.

It's from Ottolenghi the cookbook 2008 and I adapted it slightly, as I already had some macadamias in the house.


Ingredients

For the marinade

2.5kg organic chicken breasts, skin on

4 onions, roughly chopped

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

150ml extra virgin olive oil

150ml water

Zest and juice of a lemon

1 tablespoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Pinch of saffron threads

Murray salt

freshly ground pepper


For the hazelnut paste

200g unskinned hazelnuts, lightly roasted and chopped roughly (I used macadamias with awesome results)

1/2 cup of honey

2 teaspoons rosewater


Method

1. In a large dish mix the chicken with the onion, garlic, olive oil, water, lemon zest and juice, ginger, cinnamon, saffron threads and salt and pepper. Leave to marinate minimum 1 hour. .

2. Preheat the oven to 200C. Transfer the chicken and the marinade to a roasting pan. With the chicken skin side up, cook for 30-35 minutes.

3. Meanwhile mix the hazelnuts/macadamias, honey and rosewater together to make a paste.

I did this in my mortar and pestle and the results were brilliant. You want to grind a few of the nuts to a paste, but leave most of them whole (ish) for texture.

Remove the chicken from the oven and spoon the nut paste onto it, heaping it up quite high. Return to the oven for a further 10-12 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the nuts are golden brown in colour.

4. Serve with cous cous.

Chicken Thingamy Whatsit

Yup. Yest another "recipe" that I'll never be able to create again. **sigh** We had some wonderful Toolangi Chats from our delivery last week, so I cut 'em up and gave them a goodly slurp of Nabali Olive Oil and sea salt and McCormick Middle Eastern Spice Mix. Let them sit for about 30 mins, Placed them cut side down in a non-stick pan and left them to brown.. about 30 mins on med low heat.

In the pan went some sliced chicken, some red capsicum, a handful of baby spinach (also from our AFD order) and then things got weird.

I had started off with a Middle Eastern flavour profile, but I had used the last of the home-made sugo, and didn't even have a bottle of the dodgy stuff on stand-by.

So here's kinda how my thinking went... Middle Eastern, Hmmm.. that's Morrocco, right? Which has a French Influence, yes?

So to the 'fridge, and in went some dijon mustard, the juice of a whole lemon, some creme fraiche!

Voila! More Funky Fusion Food from PG!

Morrocan Lamb Casserole.

I've been very naughty and haven't posted a recipe for Aussie Farmers Direct lately. This is not because I haven't been cooking up a storm with their weekly veggie packs, but because I am a slacker and haven't got around to posting!!!! (Damn that pesky real life stuff)... So here is a little nosh that I whacked together last week, using their cabbage, onions, potato and oranges.

Brown 500g of minced lamb. Add a finely diced onion, the peel of 1/2 an orange, some Moroccan spice. (I used the Rasa el Hanout, probably about a tablespoon's worth)




sautée together until well cooked. Add some beef stock and some Arborio rice. Cook by absorption method until rice is al dente.



Line a casserole dish with some cabbage...



Here's a sneak peak at my new favorite secret ingredient...



Sprinkle cabbage liberally with secret ingredient (you poor chumps can just use normal sea salt, Maldon salt, Kosher salt)

Top with meat mix, more cabbage. another pinch of spice and seal the whole thing with a jar of Provisto Sugo (without the herbs)

Back at 180C for 3 hours and serve.



Scoff!!!